DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

2006

*Figures are only for areas where information is available

Year Male Female Unknown Total

2005 37 6 4 47

2006 13 13 1 27

Total (pre-2005 and 2006) 1,202 471 255 1,928

2005/2006 Comparison -65% +117% -75% -43%

Landmine/ERW Victims*

Country Programmes and Activities

2006

Achievements

Support from UNMAS Headquarters

UNMAS’ director and chief of programme manage-ment visited the Mine Action Coordination Centre in June 2006 to meet with the UN Country Team, Government officials, and donors to clarify issues, mobilize resources, and emphasize the importance of encouraging the new Government’s full support for mine action. The director presented the United Nations Inter-Agency Mine Action Strategy: 2006–2010 and emphasized the importance of building capacity in the Mine Action Coordination Centre to eventual-ly transfer responsibilities to a national structure.

Governmental authorities guaranteed their support to and participation in this process. The approach and Strategy were also well-received by in-country donors, who pledged their continued support for mine action.

Coordination and Training Activities

In the absence of a formal governmental mine action authority, the Mine Action Coordination Centre maintained responsibility for planning, managing, and monitoring all mine action activities on behalf of the Government. Monthly mine action coordination meetings chaired by the Centre served as the forum for ensuring maximum participation and consulta-tion with all stakeholders. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a pilot country for the “cluster approach” to humanitarian response coordinated by OCHA. Mine action is part of both the logistics and protection clusters. The Centre participated in coor-dination and planning meetings at all levels, ensuring

that humanitarian mine action is integral to the 2006 and 2007 Humanitarian Action Plans.

In addition to providing coordination, the Centre also maintained the Information Management System for Mine Action, served as a member of the MONUC senior management team, conducted accreditation of the six implementers seeking to undertake or con-tinue mine action activities, and allocated available funding for mine action activities. The Centre also assisted the Government in complying with its anti-personnel mine-ban treaty obligations.

The Centre’s gender focal point collaborated with the MONUC Gender Unit and implementing partners to establish good practices, such as the adoption of a “50/50 policy” for recruitment of all mine action personnel (including deminers); using gender balanced workshops to determine priorities for dem-ining; focusing on giving women opportunities to rise to management positions within demining teams;

and gender mainstreaming all outreach material (including surveys and mine risk education) to ensure that messages are equally accessible to all members of the target communities.

Operations

The Mine Action Coordination Centre is not itself an operational body. Instead, it coordinates the work of an array of operational mine action partners. The Centre’s demining partners surveyed and marked 464 dangerous areas, cleared 721,188 square metres of land, and destroyed 545 landmines, 8,169 items of unexploded ordnance and 79,495 other devices.

UNMAS provided funds to the Vietnam Veterans

Foundation of America to conduct survey activities and to DanChurchAid to conduct clearance opera-tions, while MECHEM was contracted to provide demining support to MONUC peacekeeping opera-tions. While their primary tasks have involved surveying and clearing campsites, bases and roads in support of MONUC peacekeeping operations, MECHEM was also tasked by the Centre to under-take various humanitarian demining operations.

During the second half of March 2006, the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation began survey activ-ities around the town of Gbadolite in the Equateur region. Activities were forced to move to the area around Gemena, also in Equateur, following a securi-ty incident in Gbadolite in May, and the survey was ultimately completed in September. In total, the sur-vey team visited 248 communities, 27 (11 percent) of which were found to be affected by ERW. In these affected communities, the survey found a total of 43 hazardous areas and 12 recent victims. In total, 567,733 people live in the affected communities, which are located in North Ubangi and South Ubangi districts. The survey had an immediate effect, as it enabled the Mines Advisory Group to prioritize their explosive ordnance disposal activities within the identified communities. Extensive survey work remains necessary throughout the country, and the

Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation is seeking to expand its work to other provinces, with support from UNMAS,

DanChurchAid created a new team this year that deals exclusively with explosive ordnance disposal and includes an individual tasked with providing mine risk education and HIV/AIDS messages and with conducting surveys of dangerous areas. The team is highly mobile, enabling fast and effective destruction of ERW, teaches the local population about the dangers of landmines, and identifies new risks. The team is now based in South-Kivu, where returning refugees from Tanzania are particularly vul-nerable to landmines and ERW.

Mine risk education partners included UNICEF, UNHCR, and many national NGOs. There was a marked increase in the delivery of mine risk educa-tion to affected communities, mainly as a result of the doubling of local NGOs involved in humanitarian mine action. In total, 166,627 people were reached throughout the country’s areas affected by land-mines and ERW. This represents a 201 percent increase over last year—a major accomplishment given the inaccessibility and remoteness of some of the country’s worst affected areas, as well as the pre-carious security situation.

Country Programmes and Activities

2006

Delivery of Mine Risk Education Services in 2006

Year Men Women Children Total Mine Risk

Beneficiaries Education Sessions

2006 33,148 29,617 103,862 166,627 1,060

Impact

Operations under the coordination of the Mine Action Coordination Centre had a significant impact on the population and contributed to the enhanced efficiency and safety of the work of humanitarian actors and peacekeepers. The clearance of roads and paths allows the population to travel safely to mar-kets, schools, hospitals, and churches. As travel by air is key in such a large country with little road infrastructure, the clearance and opening of two air-ports had a positive social and economic impact on their respective regions. Mine risk education has also played a critical role in areas that have not yet been reached by deminers, giving people the skills and knowledge to avoid potentially dangerous areas and items.

Clearance teams have been able to deploy more rapid-ly to investigate suspected hazard areas and ERW. In addition to clearance, in many cases the teams have been able to disprove the existence of hazards, enabling the population to put the land to productive use.

Mine action operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo continue to expand and improve, how-ever it is anticipated that victim and accident levels will rise as more information is gathered from previ-ously inaccessible areas and as the return to normalcy in many parts of the country allows for greater freedom of movement and the return of refugees and internally displaced persons. The mine action community therefore continues to coordinate its work with the wider humanitarian community for surveys and clearance operations in areas where refugees and internally displaced persons are returning home.

Water, Water Everywhere, But at What Cost?

On 2 August 2006, 23-year-old Espérance Tabu set off early in the morning to collect water from the pipeline that supplies Bunia with drinking water.

Alongside the well-trodden footpath, the grassy ground was soggy from the recent heavy rains and the leak in the valve on the water pipe. Espérance filled her bucket and washed her face as she had done every morning since she returned from the camp where she and her family took refuge during the war. Perhaps she felt the stir of the baby in her womb and thought of the toddler that awaited her return home. She picked up the bucket and moved the heavy load onto her head.

To maintain her balance, she stepped back into the soft, water-logged earth with the heel of her right foot.

And there, life as she knew it ended with a deafening blow under her foot: a hot destructive wave pulverized her right leg below the knee and blew her left foot to shreds. Espérance had escaped the killing and maim-ing that countless other women had fallen victim to during the war, but another agent of war was lying in wait for her to pick up that bucket of water and step off the path, destroying the hope she had felt in return-ing home after peace had returned to her district.

Many women like Espérance fetch water along this same pipeline every day, as more than 200,000 peo-ple are reliant on this water source. In November 2006, upon a request from the non-governmental development organization CARITAS and with authori-zation from MONUC, the Mine Action Coordination Centre tasked MECHEM to find and destroy any and all of landmines that are still present along the 15-kilo-metre pipeline that runs from the mountains north of Bunia. Sourced from six wells, the water is channelled through a single pipe, which supplies many villages

2006

humanitarian impact of the landmine/ERW problem in the country, implementation of emergency opera-tions, and establishment of liaison and coordination mechanisms involving all mine action operators.

Phase two is under way and has seen the opening of regional offices throughout the country, an enhanced focus on the implementation of the anti-personnel mine-ban treaty on behalf of the Government, and the consolidation of mine action activities in support of the overall humanitarian strategy. Phase three will begin in 2007 and will focus on the creation of a national management body and institutional arrange-ments capable of assuming responsibility for mine action activities, the creation of a national operational capacity on mine action, and the consolidation of a mid- and long-term plan encompassing all mine action activities.

before it branches out into Bunia. Anti-personnel land-mines were planted at the reservoirs and in the countless control valves along the pipeline in order to cut off the water supply to Bunia. The area suspected to contain landmines along the pipeline is estimated to be approximately 1,500,000 square metres.

MECHEM conducted an initial investigation after the woman’s accident in August and discovered that four more accidents had taken place in the immediate area since 2002. The full compliment of the MECHEM team in the country is working on this project when not working elsewhere on tasks for MONUC. All available resources, including mechanical ground clearance machines, mine detection dogs, and manu-al deminers are being used whenever available.

A Look at Mine Action in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Security Council Resolution 1291 of 2000 called on the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) “to deploy mine action experts to assess the scope of the mine and unexploded ord-nance problems, coordinate the initiation of mine action activities, develop a mine action plan, and carry out emergency mine action activities as required in support of its mandate.” Today, the Centre operates out of Kinshasa, Bunia (Ituri), and Bukavu (South Kivu) with a mandate to provide assistance and capacity building to the Government; to support MONUC’s operations; and to coordinate all humani-tarian mine action in the country. The UN-managed mine action programme is being undertaken in three phases. Phase one, which is now complete, involved the establishment of the Centre, assessment of the

2006

Country Programmes and Activities